3:22 pm By Maegan La Mala · crime|Justice|New York City · Comments Off
17 Dec 2008
Justin Volpe, the former NYPD officer who assaulted Abner Louima in 1997 with a broomstick inside a precinct bathroom, wants to have his sentenced reduced.
Excuse me while I tell Volpe to go to hell.
One sympathetic friend tells the Post, “”Just[in] was a wonderful kid who used to feed the homeless on Thanksgiving. What happened that day was 30 seconds of something that was unspeakable, horrible. But isn’t 12 years enough?” New York officials say the average incarceration of a violent offender in state prison is 7½ years, and murderers serve an average 24 years. But the judge in Volpe’s case sentenced him under a federal guideline that allows harsher penalties for cops.
Yeah, tell that to Abner Louima.
2:13 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · children · Comments Off
17 Dec 2008
The following is the testimonio of several men about the horrors they experienced while living in a ‘correctional’ youth home in the 1950s and 60s. Some of the abuse detailed is so horrible, it’s hard to stomach. If you can handle it, please read it, please read their testimonies, and then consider–Is there a better way to treat our children? A better way to treat our children that (god forbid) misbehave?
One day in the late 1950s, Richard Colon was working in the school’s laundry room. After a long bathroom break, Colon, then a student inmate in his early teens, said he returned and found the room empty and quiet, except for one tumble dryer that was running.
A young boy had been shoved into it, he said.
“I looked around and I thought ‘I could help him, but if I do, what will they do to me?’” he said, assuming the boy had been forced into the dryer as punishment. “So I left him. And he died.”
“I think about him every day,” said Colon, now 65 and living in Baltimore. “I think to myself, I could have opened that door and I didn’t. That torments me.”
Colon says he does not know what happened to the boy’s body or who forced him into the dryer. But he and a group of men who were students at the school during the 1950s and 1960s believe his remains may be buried among 32 unmarked graves recently discovered near the school, where they suspect boys who were killed at the school were dumped.
1:22 pm By Maegan La Mala · Culture|Music|Puerto Rico · Comments Off
17 Dec 2008There was always something a little messed up about me being 10 singing: “If you don’t give a drink, I’ll cry”. Well now thinking about it, it kind of explains many things and is why this Rican Christmas song is one of my faves especially when sung by el Gran Combo.
12:20 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Women · Comments Off
17 Dec 2008
It was with so much joy that I found out one of my favorite Latin@ bloggers, Bianca Laureano got her photo taken for the amazing project: Adipositivity. According to the website, Adipositivity is:
The Adipositivity Project aims to promote size acceptance, not by listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather, through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that’s normally unseen.
The hope is to widen definitions of physical beauty. Literally.
My favorite thing about this project is how many of us Latin@s ever are represented outside of a Jennifer Lopez, Eva Mendes or even (my honey) Salma Hayek ideal? We all know that there’s beauty in those ideals–but most of us Latin@s are beautiful in ways that do not conform to Hollywood extremes. I love that Bianca represents a Latin@ ideal–and I highly recommend all VLatin@s make it over to the website to enjoy the rest of the Adipositivity project!
11:22 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Culture|media justice|Women · Comments Off
17 Dec 2008P.S. : If you all listen closely you can hear Vl’s own Maegan la Mala.
Speak! is a women of color led media collective and in the summer
months of 2008, they created a CD compilation of spoken word, poetry,
and song. This is the first self-named album.
With womyn contributors from all over the country, Speak! is a
testament of struggle, hope, and love. Many of the contributors are in
the Radical Women of Color blogosphere and will be familiar names to
you. Instead of just reading their work, you’ll be able to hear their
voices.
I can guarantee you will have the same reaction as to when I heard
them speak, I was mesmerized.
Proceeds of this album will go toward funding mothers and/or
financially restricted activists wanting to attend the Allied Media
Conference in Detroit, MI this July. This is our own grassroots organizing at its finest with financial assistance from the AMC. We collaborated and conference called for months and here it is, ready for your purchasing.
In addition to these moving testaments, there will be a zine,
featuring more of our work and a curriculum available to further
process the meaning of each piece for yourself, education, or a group
discussion. The possibilities are endless.
You get all of this for less than $20, you can order one for yourself or buy a gift card for friend which can be redeemed to buy the CD.
Stay on your toes and look for more information come January 1, 2009.
Only 200 copies are available.
Forward this promo vid widely and to the ends of your contact list.
Spanish blogger Polonio 210 credits President Bush’s shoe ducking skills to the latest Wii game : “Wii Zapatilla”.
Now if only there was a game where we could throw shoes at Bush. My kids would love it and so would I.
Via / Mi Blog es Tu Blog
7:22 am By Maegan La Mala · Controversia|Magazines|mexico|Religion|Women · Comments Off
17 Dec 2008
Mexico’s Playboy magazine decided that December, the same month that it’s own Virgen de Guadalupe is honored, the same month that people all over the world celebrate the biblical story of a virgin birthing a messiah, would be a great time to put a naked mujer posing like the Virgen Maria on it’s cover.
Claro, it’s Playboy, not a magazine known for taste or respect except when compared to Penthouse, for example, and it’s pretty obvious that this was a stunt meant to get attention and stir things up. What interests me is the why people are so mad.
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by Mamita Mala Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse Latin@ diaspora.
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